Saturday, November 15, 2008

Coincidences

So, I guess this is pretty small beer in the bizarre world of coincidences that we inhabit but here goes.

I and a colleague have been staying in a hotel in Hyderabad for the last week. This weekend is our first free time so we booked ourselves on the budget city tour - a nine hour day on a perfectly serviceable but quaintly battered bus, trundling around the sights of Hyderabad. Our fellow passengers were almost all Indians, apart from a couple of other European looking characters and inevitably we got to chatting after a while.

It turns out, one of our fellow European types was actually called Roxana, an Argentinian, currently working in Chile, but over in India for a few weeks working with some colleagues. Who do you work for we asked? Her employers, were, she said, Company B. Now coincidentally, Company B were the subject of a hostile takeover by my employers, Company A some time ago. I mentioned that I worked for Company A, as despite the hostility of the takeover, I've never encountered any real resentment between employees of the erstwhile, separate companies.

Roxana mentioned she'd spent the week working in Hitec City which is the new area of Hyderabad that has sprung up in recent years to service the IT requirements of large organisations such as Company A and Company B. It transpired that we had also been working in the same floor of the same building for the whole of last week. It also transpired that she knew the only three people I know in the Chile office. I only know them because I met them last month when I was in the US and they were attending the training course that I and my aforementioned colleague were running in Florida and Colorado.

So there you go - that's my little coincidence of the day.

And another thing, she's staying in a hotel only 100m from the one we're staying in.....but ours is much nicer.